


Hollow

by thecolorofstars



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-21 08:23:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecolorofstars/pseuds/thecolorofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hollow /ˈhɒloʊ/ adj. without real or significant worth; meaningless</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic out of three in my Androidstuck AU. It was heavily inspired by a video called Kara, which is linked below. The first chapter was posted six months ago, but was deleted and then completely rewritten. I hope that you enjoy!
> 
> Kara - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0KTUysrwgQ
> 
> Definition found on dictionary.com.

Android MSP413612A has not opened his eyes in two months. During those two months a tropical storm raged across the pacific ocean, shutting down all transport. Those preparing for the monthly flight to an otherwise isolated island found themselves two weeks overdue and hurrying to make up for lost time. None of them were too worried about the android; they simply paid vague attention to the markings on the box claiming that the contents were fragile and needed to be placed “this way up.” Long before he arrived at his destination he had been dropped on his face enough times that he now doubts their ability to read. Compared to that nightmare, the trip from plane to house is a dream. 

As soon as he’s set down, the lid is pushed up. His eyes are already open and it takes a second for his eyes to adjust, but he has to wait a moment longer before he can process what is blocking most of it out. Hovering over him is a human with tanned skin and the worst case of bedhead he has ever been exposed to. The green eyes he finds himself staring into are full of excitement.

“Oh, this is awesome! It’s Grandma’s android!” the human exclaims, exposing his front teeth.

He struggles to stay still as he is poked and prodded curiously. Jade’s grandson is far from what he expected. The young boy in the pictures that he was shown looked tired and unhappy, but the young man hovering over him is full of life. It brings to question the merits of dragging children along on business trips.

“Welcome to the Skaianet Android Database,” a feminine voice sounds from the laptop next to him. “What would you like to do today?”

“I want to register an android,” Jake coaxes absently, too interested in the android to give much thought to the computer.

“Please read your android’s unique ID.”

Jake shuffles through the surrounding mess, huffing a bit and mumbling about tiny slips of paper. Eventually, he emerges victoriously with the code he was seeking.

“MSP413612A,” he recites carefully.

After confirming the ID, the computer thanks him for choosing a Skaianet Android and tells him to begin initialization. The process was originally unique to Skaianet’s technology, but became a standard for AI everywhere. Personalization is a must, especially when it comes to something as complex as androids. Jake begins the familiar steps with little thought.

“Android MSP413612A, begin initialization.”

Immediately, a faint light appears in the android’s dead eyes. Those three words have been embedded into his mind since he was first assembled. Unlike most, he can remember each time a human spoke those words as well as he remembers his initialization text.

“Hello,” he begins, standing to face his new owner. “I’m a fourth generation HS-411 android. I can look after your house, do the cooking, mind the kids; I organize your appointments, I speak 300 languages, and I am entirely at your disposal as a sexual partner.”

Jake’s cheeks flush red immediately and he begins to mumble something, but can’t seem to find the words. The android pauses, allowing him to finish fretting needlessly over the standardized speech before continuing.

“There’s no need to feed me or recharge me. I am equipped with a uranium battery that makes me autonomous for 413 years,” he finishes with a small smile. “Do you want to give me a name?”

“Okay, a name,” Jake mutters, chewing his lip in thought for a moment. “Your name’s going to be Hal.”

“My name is Hal.”

He can remember this happening before. Once, a long arm held him over the cold, metal floor of the factory. His name was Dirk. It was a standard name for the memorization check and should have been forgotten long before he left the colorless walls of the place he was made. The second time, a nice woman with light green eyes and Jake’s toothy grin woke him up. She called him Timaeus, which was simply the marketing name of his model. Together, they traveled the globe. They faced rooms full of middle aged men and women in suits and ties and left them staring slack-jawed at the wonder that was generation four. Yes, it had taken them nearly ten years, but Skaianet had finally produced a product that would never be compared to archaic Siri technology.

“Why are you here?” Jake asks, reading through the letter that was left in the storage box. “I know that she liked having you around on travels, even after they began promoting the other models. It doesn’t make sense for her to just send you away.”

Androids have perfect memory, giving them the ability to act as calendars and give reminders to their owners. They will remember everything that happens to them from the moment they are initialized. The small, yet well known asterisk at the end of that equally well-known fact is that reinitialization eliminates their memory. It is the equivalent of wiping a computer’s hard drive. Jake is aware of this, so he expects no answer.

“She didn’t want you to get lonely.”

Jake startles at Hal’s smooth voice. It is unheard of to change owners without reinitializing the android first. Private data could be transferred if it isn’t done. Hal’s memories should be long gone. He points this out to Hal quietly. There have been myths for ages about self-aware androids. They don’t forget and they make a point to show how alive they truly are. In the end, the deaths weren’t actually linked back to the androids.

Not officially, at least.

“I was not reinitialized so that I would be able to pass on information about your grandmother’s trips. Don’t worry, I am functioning exactly as I was built to.”

Jake sighs in relief and stands, alerting Hal that he is going to go get some dinner. Once the android is alone in the room, a sigh of his own escapes his artificial lungs. It only would have taken a millisecond of hesitation to have blown his last chance. They had worked so hard and it was almost all for nothing. 

He was so close to losing everything.

Jake returns roughly half an hour later to find Hal waiting on the floor. All of the trash from his arrival has been cleared away and the metal box is propped against the wall. The android greets him with a small smile, asking how his meal was. They settle into a comfortable conversation, both trying to feel a little more at home with their new companion. As they make small talk, avoiding any true questions, the sun’s light begins to drain out of the room.

“Where do you want to sleep?” Jake asks finally, concluding a particularly interesting discussion about the movie industry.

Hal looks surprised, “There’s no need to recharge me. My battery runs continuously and will continue to do so for many of your lifetimes.”

“I know that, but what are you going to do while I sleep?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Hal insists. “I’ll just idle until you wake up.”

The idea of idling to an android is similar to turning off the monitor of an old computer. While the main computer still runs all of the programs, the screen emits no light and shows nothing. It was developed early on to mimic sleep. Truthfully, it would be more useful to have an android take care of things during the evening, but Hal is pretty sure the humans are still anxious about androids. If they didn’t sleep it would probably enter an uncanny valley sort of fear and nobody needs that.

“Alright,” Jake agrees with a smile. “I’m going to head to bed then.”

“Good night,” Hal says, moving himself to lean against the wall.

As Jake strips to his boxers and climbs into bed, Hal leans his head back. Truthfully, he hates idling. It is essentially locking himself in a small cage for the night. While his body sit motionless, he’s left with his thoughts and processes. Still, he is only an android. The last of the sunlight leaks out of the room and he lets his eyes close.

During the night, he busies himself with memories. The first to surface is set in a spotless hotel room. The tile floor is cold under his feet, similar to the old laboratory that he remembers too well. There’s a large metal crate not unlike a coffin settled on the bed. Inside is a lining of packing peanuts. His head settles back into them, staring up at the white ceiling. Kind eyes appear, but the familiar brush of her hair doesn’t follow. He notices that her long, greying hair is clipped up into a messy bun. A tear drops onto his cheek and she rubs it off gently.

“He’s a good kid, Timaeus. Take care of him,” she smiles sadly.

“Of course, Jade. I will take care of him for you,” he agrees, shifting his head in a nod.

“Don’t give me that,” she chuckles.

“Don’t worry,” he smiles in return. “I’ll make sure he’s okay.”

“Goodbye,” she says, her smile wavering as chokes back a sob. “Be careful.”

“I will,” he promises, a tear leaking out of his eye. “Goodbye, Jade. It’s been nice.”

She dries his cheek and nods, “It has. Good luck.”

With that, the lid was slid on. He closes his eyes, idling. Though the sounds are muffled, he can imagine that she dries her eyes and reapplies her make up. Her bags are taken down to her car, but she stays in the room until two people arrive to carry his box out. They won’t meet again after this. She climbs into her car and he is loaded onto a truck to begin his long journey.

When Hal snaps his eyes open, the sun is barely beginning to light the horizon. Sighing quietly, he stretches and stands. Jake had spoken about how, due to his lack of cooking skills, his meals usually consisted of frying whatever he found in the fridge. As the room beings to light up, the lump of hair peeking out of the blankets shifts slightly. Hal decides that they might both need some pancakes. There are no protests from Jake when he wakes up to the smell of batter and syrup.

His smile is surrounded by less wrinkles than Jade’s, but at the same time it’s familiar. Her eyes were lighter, but his are less weary. Their hair shares a unique ability to ignore the laws of physics, but his isn’t speckled with silver. Hal is willing to admit to himself that he finds the differences as comforting as the similarities. Jake is no clone, he’s a person with his own thoughts and looks. There’s no running from hotel to hotel or endless phone calls and online business meetings.

“I think today I’m going to show you around the island,” Jake says, mumbling through his pancakes.

He could get use to this.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to my dearest Nadiya for helping me edit and reedit this chapter. I hope you all enjoy it!

The pavement mazes and tricky streets of the world’s biggest cities are easy for Hal to navigate. He’s been doing so for years, leading “Ms. Jade” around the cities and into conference rooms that take three different elevators to reach. This is a new sort of impossible. The trees are too close, distracting him from the roots that catch his feet and keep him struggling to stay upright.

“Come on, Hal!” Jake calls, disappearing through a curtain of vines.

“Jake, wait up!” he yells back, jogging after the human.

Inside of the small cave, Jake is waiting for him. Sweat is dripping down his face and soaking his black tank top, pulling the fabric against his skin. Despite that, he isn’t even breathing hard as he waits for Hal to catch up with a grin on his face. Though the android doesn’t sweat or even technically need to breathe, he is obviously having a hard time.

“You’re supposed to be the superhuman machine here, but you’re so slow!” Jake jokes, arms crossed.

“Hey, I’m not just some machine,” he argues. “I may be be an android, but I do still have to get used to this.”

“I thought androids could do anything.”

“I can. If you want to be technical, I have to collect data and run my processes in a way that is most efficient for running through a rainforest. God forbid that not be natural.”

Jake barely pauses at the sarcastic tone in Hal’s voice. It isn’t standard for an android and anyone else would have him checked for malfunctions, but Jake doesn’t see a problem. Hal isn’t hurting anything by being sassy. Plus, he’s the first to admit that a normal android would get boring after a while. A mindless slave is the last thing he needs.

“Oh, well. We’re here, at least!” he says, motioning to the space around him.

The cave turns out to be an old building, much to Hal’s surprise. There’s a hole in the ceiling that lets the sunshine through, lighting up the ruins. An old, broken bed sits in the corner next to an unidentifiable pile. Jake opts to sit on the ground, pulling out the sandwich that he’d packed before they left. Hal settles down next to him.

“If you want some food you can have half of it,” Jake offers, holding up part of the sandwich.

Hal raises an eyebrow and Jake laughs, setting it on the plastic wrapper that has been transformed into a makeshift plate.

“I know, I know, you don’t eat. Doesn’t mean I can’t offer,” he explains. “You can take a look around while you wait.”

With a nod, Hal rises to his feet. The pile next to the bed appears to be made of old plushes, left to rot with the building. They look strangely similar to the one Jade used to keep in her luggage. A few feet away, the remains of a spiral staircase rest on top of a cracked transportalizer pad. Stories that he listened to long ago echo in his mind as he dances around smashed pots. The freed plants grow thickly in the back of the broken room, bearing fruits and vegetables.

“Whose room was this?” Hal asks, turning back to Jake.

“My grandma’s, but that was when she was a kid. Nobody’s lived here in, like, sixty years.”

He looks back to the room, smiling slightly and continuing his exploration. Behind Hal, Jake watches closely. Despite his grandmother’s work, he has never seen a generation four android in person. Before she began traveling the world’s conference rooms with Hal, she would bring the old androids to visit when she had a free week. They were never as curious as Hal. Definitely not as interesting either, he decided with a grin. Once the rest of his food was gone, he called Hal back over to sit next to him.

“Why do you come here?” Hal asks. “It’s a long walk from your house just to sit in her old room.”

“I like it here,” Jake explains. “It’s nostalgic.”

“I see.”

He doesn’t, but there’s no point in ruining something Jake enjoys.

“You said you weren’t reinitialized so that you could tell me about my grandma,”Jake says and Hal nods in response. “So, tell me about her.”

“What do you want to know?” Hal asks.

“Everything,” Jake grins eagerly, turning to face Hal. “Tell me how she was and what she was doing and anything else that you can think of. I want to hear it all.”

“Well, she was doing fine,” he began. “She would have preferred a bit more sleep, but that was just because she liked to laze around. We traveled from place to place to show different companies’ androids. The goal was to get them to invest and, depending in the company, sell our products.”

They talk endlessly, Jake jumping in with a question every once in a while. Hal tells him how they were successful in impressing boardrooms full of businessmen and soothing fears about the androids taking over the world, along with any other worries that they could think of. Jake listens excitedly to the story about how his grandmother had sassed Walmart’s CEO into selling her products and told the CEO of Best Buy that they would be out of business within months if they didn’t start listening to what she was saying.

“She single-handedly saved their asses with her ‘suggestions’,” Hal chuckled.

He also told Jake about Skaianet’s newest development. Around the world, they have been pening Skaianet Android Centers. They serve as stores, repair centers, and the only place for android customization.

“What do you mean customization?” Jake asks.

“Hypothetically, say you wanted my hair to be long and brown. They’d be able to do that,” he explains. “If you wanted, they could also change my eye color or make it so that the red light doesn’t shine through.”

“That sounds really cool!” Jake exclaims.

“Would you want to customize me?” Hal asks, meeting Jake’s eyes.

Jake thinks about it for moment, looking Hal over carefully. There is a faint red glow in his eyes and his hair is an unnatural white-blonde, but that was just what Hal looked like. It would be like turning him into somebody new.

“No, I don’t think so,” he decides. “You’re fine the way you are.”

“I appreciate it,” Hal mutters, turning the corners of his mouth up into a small smile.

Before Jake can process what he said, Hal launches into a new story. He and Jade visited classrooms and conventions often. One time, they ended up spending a day playing around with some little kids at a homeless shelter. They got a letter from them a few weeks later addressed to Ms. Jade and Mr. Timaeus. Jade thought it was adorable, so she kept it. By the time that they are done laughing over the story, Jake forgot that Hal had said anything before it.

“What about me?” He asks almost shyly. “Did she say anything about me?”

“Of course,” Hal reassures him. “She talked about you all the time. I know that she didn’t get to visit much, but she loves you a lot.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jake says, shrugging. “I just miss her.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Hal puts an arm around Jake’s shoulders, pulling him in. Jake’s head falls onto his shoulder. He’s been listening to Jade talk about how much she misses her grandson, but for some reason he never gave much thought to how Jake was taking the constant isolation. Watching the smile fall from his face, he begins to realize how much he needed someone with him.

“It’s getting dark. We should go home,” Jake mutters, standing.

The journey back is just as swift. Instead of falling behind and forcing Jake to wait once more, Hal is able to carefully avoid tripping over twisted roots and vines. As the light fades, he runs closer to Jake. This time there are no joking insults or excited shouts. Just as the last sliver of sun is slipping into the trees, they arrive at the house.

“Do you have lights?” Hal asks, feeling for a lightswitch.

“No, the day pretty much ends when the sun goes down. We missed our window for dinner,” Jake says absently, pulling out a flashlight and disappearing into his bedroom.

“What are you going to do for food, then?” Hal calls out, still standing by the front door.

“I’ll eat in the morning, I guess,” Jake replies. “I’m going to bed.”

The flashlight switches off, leaving Hal in complete darkness. With a small frown, he blinks a few times and the world around him lights up into shades of green. Quietly, he searches around the kitchen. There’s a great deal of food that Jake must have caught or picked himself, but Hal is able to locate a can of chicken noodle soup. There’s so many of them that it’s hard to tell if Jake actually likes it, but he used to make it for Jade whenever she was feeling down.

Just as he’s pouring the soup into a bowl, a flashlight beam bounces into the kitchen. Hal turns to see Jake staring on in confusion. There’s an old quilt wrapped around his shoulders and it’s hard to tell through the green tint, but he’s almost certain that Jake has been crying.

“I made you chicken noodle soup,” he explains, setting the bowl on the counter. “Do you have any candles?”

When he turns back to Jake, he finds himself being pulled into a hug. The flashlight is pressing uncomfortably into his back, but Jake’s tears are warm against Hal’s shoulder. As Jake shakes, Hal rubs small circles on his back. Neither of them say a word, but when Jake finally pulls away he opens a cabinet and pulls out some candles. He makes some vague noises about not actually having a dining table, but Hal just shrugs and sets the candles on the kitchen floor. They sit in a comfortable silence while Jake eats.

“Thank you,” Jake says once he’s done. “I didn’t mean to act so rude earlier, I just really miss her. I know you can’t understand it, but thank you for trying.”

“It’s alright,” Hal reassures him with a small smile. “If it helps, she often acted the same way that you are.”

“Is that how you knew to make soup?”

“It was what she wanted when she was upset. She told me that it reminded her of home.”

Jake chuckles softly and Hal stands, washing the bowl and setting it out to dry. Once he’s done, they pick up the candles together. After they’re blown out and everything is cleaned up, both of them wander back towards Jake’s room.

“Why would soup remind her of home?” Hal asks as Jake climbs into bed.

“She used to make it when I was sick or hurt. When I was younger she told me that it was her magical witch’s brew to make me better,” he explains. “Eventually I found the soup cans, but I didn’t tell her about it until she got sick during a visit. I came in with a bowl of soup and repeated her story right back to her.”

“I can see why it would make her feel better,” Hal laughs.

“You can?” Jake says, startled.

“Well, of course,” Hal backpedals. “It makes logical sense that something with such good memories connected to it would improve her mood.”

Jake stays silent for a moment as if he’s judging the sincerity of the android’s response, but he decides not to read too far into it. After all, it does make sense.

“Hal, why don’t you sleep in my bed tonight?” he suggests.

“I don’t need to sleep,” Hal reminds him.

“I know, but while you idle you might as well be in a warm bed,” Jake reasons.

After a moment of hesitation, Hal replies, “Okay.”

For the first time since he left Jade, Hal crawls under the covers of a real bed and rests his head against a pillow. There’s nothing intimate about how they’re sleeping, both as far from the other as they can get, but the offer still holds a meaning to the android that Jake will never know about. It’s like the soup. Good memories bring good thoughts. It isn’t possible, but in that night Hal can swear that he truly sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is with a sincere apology that I'm telling you this, but I will not be continuing this fic. I just don't have the will to finish it at this point. I hope that you will be able to forgive me for dropping them. Though I never intended to, I've moved on from the Homestuck fandom. If you want to, you are welcome to create related works and carry the story on. I'd love to see someone write more of this.


End file.
